EIRP Proceedings, Vol 12 (2017)

Abstract

Women’s rights are human rights and violence against women is actually a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination. For many decades, a form of violence against women is so called “intimate partner violence”. This kind of violence includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and even the control of behaviour by an intimate partner. Thus, this paper aims at analysing, in a legal and sociological paradigm, the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, developed by the Council of Europe, an instrument that could lead to a growing integration of human rights combating the biases that accept the violence against women. Through these norms, instruments and education women should be empowered to break the cycle of accepting subordination and violence. Therefore, the conclusions resulting from the study are that cultural and religious customs and traditions that are used to justify violence against women must be forbidden. A lot of campaigns for raising awareness on this issue have to be launched aim aiming at challenging their acceptance in society.